Sacred Spring (Done!)

Time for a new project! This time I will be creating a small, painterly diorama of a magical, sacred spring

The idea for this piece came from a concept by Sephiroth Art (check out his other works too, they're really good).

Originally I was just going to recreate this, exactly as shown. But after a little more thought, I decided I wanted to create something with some ornate detail and to increase the magical feeling. Here's what I found:

With these new inspirational reference images by a lot of other fantastic artists, I did a quick (rough) paintover of what I will now create:

This will be sculpted in Zbrush, painted in 3D Coat and presented in Marmoset Toolbag 3.

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Here is the blockout I created today, as well as a quick lighting setup in Marmoset Toolbag 3.Getting the basic shapes down and lit within the engine, quickly helps to see if things are reading well, the scale feels correct and the composition looks nice:

Haven't had the chance to work on this for a while, but spent some time sculpting the lotus flower rock today.I'm going to do another sculpt pass on the other rocks surrounding the spring this week, as I'm not 100% happy with them after sculpting this.Next update coming soon!

Rocks!Pretty simple rock set. I didn't want to sculpt in too much detail, as I will be painting variation and imperfections into the texture, so kept it purely angles and cracks. These can be flipped and rotated to create all of the shapes surrounding the spring.

Next job is to sculpt the ground plane. This will be one piece that contains all of the grass and underwater, rocky sections. Again, the sculpting detail will be kept low to avoid noisiness once it is textured.

I'm undecided whether to use normal maps or not with this project. I have been really inspired by a lot of diffuse-only handpainted artwork recently and may just end up using my sculpts to bake ao and cavity etc from.

I have made a little bit of progress the last couple of weeks, but nothing super exciting to show. I did another sculpt pass on the rocks, as when I looked back on the previous ones, they were too sharp and will work nicer with softer edges.I have also spent some time retopoing these rocks, as well as the lotus flower rock (thrilling).

High poly grass tufts and lilypad test. These will bake down to planes and create a nice base to paint on. I think some tufts of grass sticking out from between the rock crevices will add to the silhouette and look nice The last piece to tackle before UVs and baking, is the water lily itself!

Finally back on to this project properly!Since the last update, i took part in a Sketchfab #FoodChallenge >check it out here<I have also completed the retopo, uvs, bakes, tweaked the lighting and thrown some base colours on....Now to paint her up!

this is going to look great with some hand painted detail, looking forward to seeing what you do. I really like all the ripples and edge details and subtle lighting in the sephiroth art concept inspiration! Some magical fireflies and details like that might help sell where the light is coming from too.

@Ged Thanks. I agree, there is a lot of nice details to paint in and it will start to come together. I will add the little, round emissive glows. Also going to try some sort of subtle 'wisps', spiralling up from the lotus flower

Had a couple of nights where I tried to sit down and paint, but for whatever reason I just couldn't get into a nice flow. It's not ideal when that happens, but it's OK. If anyone else has periods of feeling this way, either take a short break (if possible), or tackle another task that day! So, instead I concentrated on getting some of the missing models in and alphas set up in the textures.I want to have this wrapped up by Christmas break ideally, so I will seriously have to push on with the texture and final polish elements over the next couple of weeks.

New update from today. Mostly working on the water; painting the texture and tweaking the material. Also played about with the wisp and specs more, general small tweaks here and there.Need to start painting the grass and mud plane next.I will be updating this more regularly, as I get close to wrapping it up.

I love the way you've moved away from the main concept to make it your own whilst keeping the same feel. Really cool. Only think that's throwing me off is the small waterfall that's looking really static. I can see you've painted the effect of the water being displaced, but it still looks like the water is falling behind the pond if you get what I'm saying. Maybe it could use some water splashes or thickness to the water? Just some ideas, really beautiful project, your painterly style is very nice!

"Legend has it those who drink from the sacred spring are granted immortality".Inspired by the concept from Sephiroth Art. Paintover by myself. Modelled in Maya, sculpted in Zbrush, textured in 3D Coat and Photoshop, rendered in Marmoset Toolbag. 3x 1024x1024, 1x 512x512 textures. 3091 tris.